Lessons from the development and operation of the Chandra x-ray observatory

Genuine teamwork was a key ingredient of the success of the Chandra x-ray observatory mission. Examples are the science center personnel working as part of the instrument principal investigators (IPI) teams during pre-launch development, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) supporting NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) by directly working with the prime contractor, TRW (now Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems), and TRW acceptance of outside scientists performing the data reduction and analysis for qualification of the aspect camera. An end-to-end thread was defined early on, based on the MSFC/SAO operation of the Einstein observatory x-ray telescope, and covered the cycle from solicitation and peer review of observation proposals through scheduling to data processing and delivery. An open science working group chaired by MSFC included instrument principal investigators and interdisciplinary scientists spanning diverse astrophysical and instrumental expertise.